This blog is intended for the purpose of scrutinizing video games from a basis of game theory. It means to separate the dearth of true video games from the deluge of interactive button mashing. It’s intended as a learning process for me, to further my understanding and by extension, your understanding of game theory; to review games in qualitative and consistent manner; to provide insight into the gaming industry at large and to go off on random tangents about art.Let me clarify this manifesto with a bit of reality: I’m not a programmer. I have no conception of the monumental difficulties of programming a game, and bringing it to fruition. It’s a skill that I am envious of, and respect greatly. I’m also not a scientist. I like to think of myself as academically minded, but unless I somehow do this long enough to get a de facto master’s degree in game theory, you won’t be finding these articles teeming with rigorous experiments.
And now, some history — Theoretically Awesome was conceived basically on a dare. A friend challenged me to make a website to spur me in the direction of life-fulfilling action, as we whiled our days away at a thankless job. I came up with the idea of “Awesome in Theory” because it embraced a certain lifestyle that I was apt to fall into: one that looked good on paper. However, a three-word URL rarely works out to one’s benefit and would probably be ignored just on the basis of that alone. So it evolved into Theoretically Awesome, and promptly sat dormant for a year.
In its larval phase though, I became more and more interested in the concept of game theory. A few clicks through wikipedia, a few papers on “the prisoner’s dilemma” and a few trips to the bookstore later and I was utterly hooked. I don’t think I can elaborate much further just yet, hopefully that will come later. But it got me thinking about the concept of payoff vs. penalties in games.
Games today have increasingly seemed to do away with having penalties anymore, or if they do – they’re inconsequential; meaning the player doesn’t really wind up sacrificing much. Nowadays, the only penalty games seem to impose on players is time lost, and in my opinion, it’s plain cruel on people. Maybe it’s because I don’t have as much time as I used to in my youth and I have early onset of old-man crotchetyness, but I just don’t feel that artificially lengthening a game’s playthrough time is something to spend money on. (there are probably exceptions to prove this rule).
Twitch gaming and button mashing have their place in the canon of gaming, and many great games have been born of that. But those are the games that I usually put down after playing for 15 minutes and walk away from. So I’m here to help expose those games for what they are and to point out the games that may be well worth your hard-earned leisure time. And just think, all I have to do now is come up with a consistent system for reviewing!
